Fishing & Other Tangents

I haven’t been fishing in decades. I can still remember those days at camp when we could get up early to bundle into L’s truck, me, my dad, my brother, L and his sons S and C. Early wasn’t a problem because the day was an adventure and so eagerness and adrenaline got you up and moving, excited.

I miss that feeling of eager anticipation for what the day brings. A lot of what I am trying to figure out is so that I can reshape my life so that every morning, or at least a majority of them, bring that feeling back.

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Today there is a silent protest against the coming regulations and fees levied against internet radio . . . literally silent as many internet radio stations go off the air. Please, if you haven’t contacted your congressional representatives, call them today. If you go to SaveNetRadio.org, they will have all the information about contacting your representatives. Please, take 10 minutes of your day and help save the music!

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Despite my previous post, I am back to using Safari as my main browser. I do still prefer Opera in many respects, but I have just started using Yojimbo as a note-taking, information archiving, and web research tool and the little java bookmarklets that let me archive a web page (or just a link if I wanted) directly from a browser only seem to work with Safari and Firefox. For some reason, except for using Portable Firefox on my usb drive while I’m at work, I just don’t find Firefox to be all that compelling these days. So for now, I’m back with Safari.

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I just finished reading Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. The science is awful, the gender politics are next to stone age, and structurally there are certain problems with the overall story, But . . . it’s a beautiful novel. There are moments of poetry that sparkle like brilliant stars on a cold winter night. The underlying theme of loss and nostalgia are palpable. Bradbury doesn’t so much pull on your heartstrings as take your emotions in a Martian hand and squeezes until you recognize your own loss and nostalgia, and how destructive those emotions, especially nostalgia, can be. I remember watching the movie version so many years ago, and I don’t remember much, but I do remember the scene where the Martian is brought into town, and because of its extreme emphathic/telepathic abilities, it begins to morph into person after person after person, reflecting each of the townspeople’s desire for a lost loved one. Nobody and everybody, the Martian can’t help but reflect all that pain and loss until it dies. I think I’ve always felt a little bit like that Martian, always trying to fit my shape into other people’s desire. Never finding, fully, my own shape.

Of course, that realization, like most realizations, is only partly true and certainly not the full story. But the important thing is that it is true enough.